D&D General Why Combat is a Fail State - Blog and Thoughts

[EzekielRaiden]

To me, this is the most salient quote in the blog post:

"Therefore, by not systematizing something, we give it the power to expand and dominate a part of the conversation, because without rules the fiction must be resolved through discussion. For example, by not giving characters a skill for finding traps or disarming them (but putting them in direct conflict with traps), we plant fertile seeds for emergent play about discussing how to find, avoid, and disarm traps in detail. Conversations that cannot be skipped with a skill roll."

The most core tenent of OSR play is that play is supposed to be about negotiation. Ideally, negotiation with an impartial DM that's acting as a "world simulator" who is generating material as impartially and algorithmically as possible.

All rule sets beyond that have an implicit purpose of moving some of the authority to make all decisions away from the DM. That could be towards table-visible resolution methods or more directly towards the players.

I know I'm a bit late to the party on this one, but this pretty well encapsulates exactly my problem with a lot of OSR.

I don't think DMs are or can be sufficiently impartial to make this negotiation sustainable. (Note: sustainable, meaning, keeping it up forever without failure of impartiality.) I don't think most players want to be having to constantly re-litigate everything they've already attempted the next time they attempt it. And, most importantly, I don't think "EVERYTHING is negotiation" is actually a form of gameplay at all.

Don't get me wrong. I love Dungeon World, and it describes itself as a conversation. But that conversation has a specific component that most conversations don't: the moments when mechanics resolve things. Because the conversation occasionally produces a conflict or a contest or a risk or whatever else, where we don't know what the consequence should be. Those places are precisely what the mechanics are for. Treating this as an icky awful thing to be avoided at all costs weakens the process, because now there never is an actual resolution, there's just a "we'll leave it there for now".

A DM that is actually impartial and who treats similar situations in similar ways IS, functionally, writing rules. They're just writing rules the players aren't allowed to see, so they're constantly bumping into things.* And if the DM in question decides "okay, we know and agree on how X works, so we'll just write that down so that we don't have to re-litigate it every time", they literally are doing the thing you explicitly reject here as unacceptable in OSR play. They are saying that the negotiation is done, it doesn't have to be repeated, we know what's going to happen.

Now, the converse side--where there are only rules, zero improv, zero discussion, zero wiggle-room--is just as bad. Board games get away with it because their play-space is severely limited. TTRPGs embrace far too large a spectrum to do that. But that doesn't mean that well-defined rules are a bad thing. It means that those well-defined rules need to be well-crafted and fit for purpose, so that the participants elect to negotiate when the defined rules fail them, rather than having to eternally reopen the discussion and re-argue the points and figure out for the umpteenth time whether X counts or doesn't count etc.

*There is a game that works this way. It's called Mao, and is...not for everyone for that exact reason.

 

[Gus L]

What I find ironic is that the 5e challenge system emulates much of that. The PCs set the "level" and the encounters range from easy to deadly. Now, 5e was overly cautious with it's numbers (something the revision has addressed) but the result was pretty similar with the sole exception that the PCs, not the dungeon level, sets the average.

It makes sense to me - but only in the context of play style.

One of the difficulties in discussing "D&D", especially in a community like EN-World which skews towards newer editions, is the tendency to lump all the editions of D&D's together, when different editions clearly seem to encourage different playstyles -- even while many of the rules remain similar at first glance. The differences between how one plays, what players expects, and how one designs adventures for AD&D and 5E are vast - and then with the OSR we got a whole new set of interpretations on those older rulesets. I sometimes think the play style of 5E has gone through a similar reinterpretation since release, perhaps in response to streaming play?

My impression is that "CR" (in Pathfinder, 4E, and 5E ) is a system structured around balancing individual encounters. This works in these systems (a play style I call "Contemporary Traditional" and others have called things like "OC") because they focus on set-piece combat encounters with fairly complex tactical rules between small numbers of combatants. There's absolutely a discussion to be had about to what degree 1974 D&D was originally envisioned as a tactical game - but it was certainly a skirmish game with larger numbers of "figures" on each side then Contemporary Trad - and the OSR did not champion this style of play. So CR, and the adventure design it supports focuses on individual (mostly combat) encounters. It's part of a style of play using "Encounter Based Design" - something I generally see supported in the Contemporary trad Community and literature.

The thing here is that the older Level Based design doesn't work that well for set-piece tactical encounters, but for larger navigation and exploration based challenges. The challenge in an OSR dungeon crawl is almost always extracting valuables from the hostile environment and that environment has both difficult areas/encounters and less difficult ones. A big part of play is making decisions at the "level" layer - which route to take (and the players should be able to learn this), which encounters, risks and even treasures to avoid etc. It's risk management and planning ... but disrupted by random encounters.

For an encounter focused game most of the decisions are in the individual tactical encounters and want to tune them to be tricky... the party should need skill, luck and to use the right resources at the right time to fight through them... This becomes much harder when there are things like random encounters and lots of navigation/supply decisions.

So Level vs. Encounter based design and Level/Random Encounter Table vs. Challenge Rating based balance have different goals and likely work well for the play styles they support. The issue is that since we call both play styles "D&D" a lot of the time people get confused and use the wrong tools.

 

[Mannahnin]

When I dug into the OSR, I had three questions:

1. What is it?
2. When did it begin?
3. Why did it begin?

The whole thing has a weird kind of "smoke" around it. But I found a series of articles that cleared all that smoke and made sense of everything:

Myths of the Early OSR 1: origins and anti-storytelling sentiment

A blog about table-top role-playing games after a break of two decades.

lichvanwinkle.blogspot.com

There's some good data in that, but also some misconceptions. I came in about ten years earlier than that person, and definitely 2007-2008 was an inflection point, with a big explosion in the blogosphere in particular launching then and continuing for several years. Big linchpin OSR blogs like Grognardia and Delta's D&D Hotspot originate from that point.

But as I mentioned, the concept of an old school renaissance or revival was already being discussed as early as 2004 (Trent Foster "The Long Journey Home" post on Dragonsfoot, Aug 11), and was in reference to a scene that had already been developing and discussing these games for a couple of years. Other landmarks were Gary Gygax joining Dragonsfoot in 2002, and The Acaeum adding a forum section for discussion that same year. The scene picked up momentum over a few years, and then had another big infusion of energy when OSRIC and BFRPG (the first retro-clones) were released in 2006, then the blog explosion in 2007-2010, with more and more folks discussing as a frantic pace, putting out new ideas and analysis and free content. A few years later there was the Google+ phase starting in 2011, and then the expansion of self-publishing. Which was a bit of a schism between folks who thought it should be a hobbyist movement with free content, and those who were selling their stuff. And not always just because they wanted to cash in, but sometimes because actually selling stuff gives you a budget to hire artists and make your stuff cooler and better, even if it's still really a hobby activity.

A more complete historical overview you might want to check out is here:

A Historical Look at the OSR — Part I

Old-school Renaissance / OSR theory and design.

osrsimulacrum.blogspot.com

How many of the WotC published adventures have included this distribution of encounters, with many that are too difficult? At least in the ones I've played, those have been few and far between.

I don't have a survey, but some. That first encounter in Lost Mines of Phandelver is pretty famous. There are a few rough ones in Rime of the Frostmaiden that I played through, including one with Duergar, one with a Chardalyndragon which is really nasty, and one with multiple Flameskulls which ambush you in the glacier dungeon en route to the fallen city which is one of the last parts of the module.. That last one rocked us and we had to retreat and recover and try it again more cautiously and using different tactics.

5E doesn't give an exact ratio or percentage that I'm finding right now, for how many should be Deadly. 3.5 suggests 15% should be Very Difficult (EL 1-4 levels above the party) and 5% Overpowering (5+ above). 4E suggests 1 in 9, or about 11% of encounters, should be party level +3.

 

[Theory of Games]

There's some good data in that, but also some misconceptions. I came in about ten years earlier than that person, and definitely 2007-2008 was an inflection point, with a big explosion in the blogosphere in particular launching then and continuing for several years. Big linchpin OSR blogs like Grognardia and Delta's D&D Hotspot originate from that point.

But as I mentioned, the concept of an old school renaissance or revival was already being discussed as early as 2004 (Trent Foster "The Long Journey Home" post on Dragonsfoot, Aug 11), and was in reference to a scene that had already been developing and discussing these games for a couple of years. Other landmarks were Gary Gygax joining Dragonsfoot in 2002, and The Acaeum adding a forum section for discussion that same year. The scene picked up momentum over a few years, and then had another big infusion of energy when OSRIC and BFRPG (the first retro-clones) were released in 2006, then the blog explosion in 2007-2010, with more and more folks discussing as a frantic pace, putting out new ideas and analysis and free content. A few years later there was the Google+ phase starting in 2011, and then the expansion of self-publishing. Which was a bit of a schism between folks who thought it should be a hobbyist movement with free content, and those who were selling their stuff. And not always just because they wanted to cash in, but sometimes because actually selling stuff gives you a budget to hire artists and make your stuff cooler and better, even if it's still really a hobby activity.

A more complete historical overview you might want to check out is here:

A Historical Look at the OSR — Part I

Old-school Renaissance / OSR theory and design.

osrsimulacrum.blogspot.com

I read over "Historical Look ..." and there was too much of the writer's opinion, combined with a surprising amount of hearsay, for me to take it too serious. I prefer facts and quotes from the people involved. There ARE a few cliques within the OSR battling for position, which is just how things work, especially when money is involved.

Thanks for your input

 

[The Firebird]

I don't have a survey, but some. That first encounter in Lost Mines of Phandelver is pretty famous. There are a few rough ones in Rime of the Frostmaiden that I played through, including one with Duergar, one with a Chardalyndragon which is really nasty, and one with multiple Flameskulls which ambush you in the glacier dungeon en route to the fallen city which is one of the last parts of the module.. That last one rocked us and we had to retreat and recover and try it again more cautiously and using different tactics.

5E doesn't give an exact ratio or percentage that I'm finding right now, for how many should be Deadly. 3.5 suggests 15% should be Very Difficult (EL 1-4 levels above the party) and 5% Overpowering (5+ above). 4E suggests 1 in 9, or about 11% of encounters, should be party level +3.

Maybe I've been unlucky and had easier experiences. The Lost Mines I encounter I wager is difficult by accident, not by design; is the tutorial level supposed to be a deadly one? Regarding Rime, I remember the Flameskulls and the Chardalyn dragon, but neither was that challenging for us. But we were playing with AL legal rules so I think it limited how much the DM could modify things. He's run other games for us which were quite challenging.

 

[Mannahnin]

I read over "Historical Look ..." and there was too much of the writer's opinion, combined with a surprising amount of hearsay, for me to take it too serious. I prefer facts and quotes from the people involved. There ARE a few cliques within the OSR battling for position, which is just how things work, especially when money is involved.

Thanks for your input

Sure, lots of subjective opinions and different perspectives.

The movement was already being discussed as a movement two years before the first retro-clones, though. That's just objective reality.

 

[Theory of Games]

Sure, lots of subjective opinions and different perspectives.

The movement was already being discussed as a movement two years before the first retro-clones, though. That's just objective reality.

Just based on what I've read from a few authors, the "OS" movement started "unofficially" while the Dragonlance modules were being created? Like the movement might have actually started within TSR? The history is interesting, provided the right sources are being recognized

 

[NN]

Im sure i can find a letter in an early White Dwarf complaining that AD&D is an unwieldy over-ruled cash grab .

 

[SkidAce]

What I find ironic is that the 5e challenge system emulates much of that. The PCs set the "level" and the encounters range from easy to deadly. Now, 5e was overly cautious with it's numbers (something the revision has addressed) but the result was pretty similar with the sole exception that the PCs, not the dungeon level, sets the average.

I agree when I develop an adventure (to an extent).

However, while playing in my setting the PCs could go to the "Well of Souls" (a genie dungeon/prison) where the 1st floor is CR 5, and it gets higher as you descend until you hit CR 15.

In other words, I still use the old school "level" theory for some dungeons, and even areas. (Spiderglen Forest CR 1-3.)

 

[Mannahnin]

Just based on what I've read from a few authors, the "OS" movement started "unofficially" while the Dragonlance modules were being created? Like the movement might have actually started within TSR? The history is interesting, provided the right sources are being recognized

Hmm. The Dragonlance modules (and the market success of Hickman's earlier works, like Rahasia, Pharaoh, and Ravenloft) is often viewed as a dividing line nicknamed the Hickman Revolution, marking a transition in TSR itself from more game-oriented modules to more story-oriented modules, with instructions for illusionism and railroading tricks to keep the players/PCs on task and on course. Although really this was a gradual process over years, not a hard line switch.

This is one reason that older Dragonsfoot discussion sometimes marked 2E as the end of the old school, and excluded therefrom, due to its post-Gygax design tweaks like making XP for treasure into an optional rule, and replacing that with story awards for completing adventure goals. Although you still see exceptions- IIRC the famous campaign supplement Night Below for 2E specifically advised using xp for treasure despite being released in 1995.

Back in the 80s, though, there was, like in the 70s, kind of a wide variety of play agendas and standards and there was less ability for players to communicate about and share their cultures of play. Interaction at conventions and via letters pages and articles in Dragon and other gaming periodicals happened, but it was much slower and more limited than we see in the world wide web era (and especially after WotC acquired TSR and rescinded its hostile policies toward fan sites).

Here's a pretty cool timeline of the OSR through 2014, with lots of data points/milestones:

https://i.4pcdn.org/tg/1727532839072592.pdf